Eveline Mandeville | Page 7

became wonderfully gentle in his attentions. His touch
was trained to be light and soft as a woman's, his step quiet, and his
manner subdued. He would leave the room only for a few minutes at a
time, and then return with an air of impatience, but it often happened
that for hours together he would allow no one to share the duties of
nurse with him, though the best of aid was always at hand. And he had
a reason for this singular course of conduct. Eveline frequently raved in
her delirium, and words would then fall from her lips which he would
not have others to hear for the wealth of India. Why? Listen for a few
moments:
"Oh, how dark! all dark! Nothing but clouds! No sun, no moon, no stars!
When will morning come? Who made it dark? Oh, God! that my father,
my own father, should do this!"
Thus would the unconscious child talk into the very ear of her parent,
often wringing her hands and manifesting the utmost distress. Then her
thoughts would take another direction, on this wise:
"What a load is on my heart; oh, so heavy! It weighs me down to the
earth. Who will take it away? Alas, there is no one to pity me! No one
will come to me and lift this great burden from my bosom; and it is
crushing the life-blood from my heart! Hark! don't you hear the drops
fall as they are pressed out? Patter, patter, patter! Well, it will soon be
over; they will see the blood; yes, and he, my once good, dear, kind
father; oh, may he never know that his hand wrung it out and wrenched
my heart in twain! Poor father! he knew not that he was killing me--me
his only daughter. May he never be wiser! Ah, I am going."
She would sink down exhausted, and lay sometimes for hours in a
stupor, after these paroxysms of excitement, and the heavy-hearted

father often feared she would never rouse again. But a higher stage of
fever would awaken her from the state of lethargy, and then the ears of
the agonized parent would be greeted and his heart pierced by words
like these:
"Oh, hear him, father, hear him! I know he can explain it to your
satisfaction. How can Charles bear such charges? I wonder at his
patience and self-command. Father, father! How unjust! How cruel! Do
let him speak! Convinced! Yes, on what grounds? Whose word is
entitled to more credit than that of Charles? That's it! The name--the
name of the base slanderer. I know it is some villain. Father! how can
you deny him the only means of defense? 'Unpleasant rencounter!' yes,
to the vile miscreants, no doubt. 'Confidence!' My life! isn't Charles
worthy of confidence, too? His word alone is worth a thousand oaths of
such heartless slanderers as those that stab in the dark! Don't get angry,
Charles, he's my father. Nobly done! How respectfully he acts when so
abused and insulted! All will yet be right. Ah! I'll tell him how I spurn
the accusation! How my soul burns with indignation that his fair name
should be assailed! I am so glad he is coming; I know he feels deeply
the wrong--What!"
At this point the startled look of the poor girl alarmed the father. She
bent her head, in a listening attitude, as if eager to catch every word
that was spoken by some one in the distance. Ah, too well the wretched
parent knew on what her thoughts were running. Too well he knew
where and when the blow had fallen that smote his child to the
dust--perhaps had opened to her the gate of death. A deep, stifled, half
sigh, half groan escaped from her lips, and she murmured in a hoarse
whisper:
"Father, father! you will kill your child. Oh, God! this is too much!
Turned from our door! without a word of comfort! How deadly pale he
is! My own parent to call him 'unworthy!' and then forbid him to
speak!"
At this point a shriek from her lips would lift the father to his feet, the
cold drops of agony on his brow. That soul-rending cry he had heard
before, but it lost none of its horrors by being repeated. Alas, it told but

too plainly of the wreck his cruel words had made, and he trembled lest
only the beginning of sorrows was upon him. How he blamed himself
for being so rash and precipitate; and, as Eveline sunk back in
exhaustion, the awful thought kept forcing itself into his mind:
"If she dies, I am her murderer!" What a reflection for a parent over an
almost dying child! Who can measure the anguish it created in